


A Special Gift

by TheGreatGame



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: A quick adventure involving cats, Gen, spaaaaace cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 21:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17067899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatGame/pseuds/TheGreatGame
Summary: This is my Classic Who Secret Santa gift for tumblr user gays4thor. I chose to write using the first prompt, which was “The 2nd Doctor gets in some kind of trouble and Jamie has to figure out a way to save him.”





	A Special Gift

“Och, Doctor, can we not rest?”

Jamie stumbled as the Doctor stopped in mid-crawl in front of him. Somehow, the Doctor was still bright and full of energy, even with the moon high in the midnight sky. And it wasn’t only the time that was the problem. The fresh, white snow on the ground may have been useful in providing tracks to follow, as well as giving the park a serene atmosphere, but it was still freezing. Jamie liked to boast that he could stand the cold, but even he had to admit that he was starting to lose feeling in his knees.

“Jamie, I know it might feel like a bother having to do this on Christmas—”

Jamie rolled his eyes. It might have been Christmas here, in this city in 2018, but the holiday started to lose a little of its glamor when you could celebrate it anywhere, anywhen, what with time being relative and all. They had actually celebrated Christmas a couple weeks ago, and Jamie was still getting over how he had eaten two plates of Christmas cookies in one sitting.

“… but we have to find that lion cub as soon as possible,” the Doctor continued. “The zoo said it’s only been missing for half a day, and we just can’t afford to let anymore time pass. And besides, these tracks will most likely be walked over in the morning.”

The tracks were curious. They certainly weren’t lion cub tracks. They were too big, and they had too many feet. They weren’t from any animal Jamie could think of, and they went all over the park.

Jamie yawned. At this point, he was so tired, he almost wished he was recovering from a cold back in the TARDIS, like Zoe was. At least he could’ve been sleeping.

“Oh, dear.”

“What?”

The Doctor pointed. A few feet ahead of them, there were even more paw prints in one place. The tracks no longer made a straight path. They curved in circles before splitting off in two different directions.

“Whatever left these must have walked here more than once. I can’t tell which part is the most recent.”

“Let’s split up then. I’ll take the left and you take the right.”

The Doctor smiled and gave Jamie’s shoulder a parting squeeze. They left quickly, the Doctor wanting to find the cub, and Jamie wanting to get this done and get a good night’s rest.

After a few minutes, the tracks led the Doctor to a shack next to a small, frozen-over pond. From the look of the menus on the front of the shack, the Doctor guessed that it was partway between a cafe and a place to store snacks. He tread carefully, walking around the shack until he found a back door that was eerily ajar. The part of it that had once held the lock and, presumably, the doorknob lay shattered and still on the floor.

The Doctor almost thought twice about going inside; perhaps he would find Jamie first and then make some sort of plan. After all, he had no idea what made those tracks, and-

He gasped. He crouched in the doorway, keeping as quiet as a mouse, until he heard it again, echoing from the inside of the shack. It was a cry, soft and gentle as a petal falling.

The shack was cold and crowded on the inside. There were boxes full of bags of chips, a few stations of stoves where hot sandwiches could be made, some coffee machines, and more that the Doctor neglected to pay attention to. He was understandably distracted by how the back of the shack had been cleared, how the boxes that had previously been stored there lay torn apart, along with their contents. The cleared space was full of blankets, towels, and napkins, all of which were arranged to form a makeshift nest. And in the center of that nest was a lion cub, barely old enough to totter around.

“Well, hello there,” the Doctor cooed. “Aren’t you a pretty one?”

He kneeled down and scooped up the cub. It flailed and swatted feebly in his hands. Even in the pale moonlight streaming through the window, its fur was so obviously a lovely shade of gold.

“You really are adorable,” the Doctor chuckled. “Someone will be very happy to get you back tonight.”

Well, that would be the end of that, then! The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. He had been very enthusiastic about finding this lost little dear, but he had also been slowly getting colder and colder as the rough winter night went on.

And that was why, when a warm gust of air hit the back of his neck, it was that much more noticeable.

The Doctor turned and stared into a grin of glittering, pointed teeth. Standing before him was a creature that could have been a lion, but if an artist had only been told, vaguely, what a lion looked like, and could only paint it with shadows. Its dark and fluttering form stood on eight muscled legs, and its head only reached the Doctor’s neck because it was crouching. Its eyes were two of the few things about it that wasn’t colored in a shade of night- they were a deep, warm amber, despite the fact that they were currently seeing red.

The creature was elegant. It was beautiful.

It was growling.

“N-nice kitty…”

It lunged.

***

Well, those tracks led nowhere. Jamie had looped around a random snow-covered field for a bit before following the paw prints back to where they had first diverged. He muttered as he followed the other path to the snack shack, stomping his feet to get some life back into them.

Then, when he had almost circled around the pond enough to be close to the shack, he stopped. There were growls and roars coming from inside the shack, and the smashing of wood and furniture, but what really made Jamie’s blood run cold were the too-familiar cries of “Oh my word!”

“Doctor!”

Forgetting his numb knees, Jamie ran to one of the shack’s windows. Through the grime and snow on the panes, he watched as two black blurs ran around the room— a spider-cat of shadows and the Doctor. Both were scrambling wildly, desperately. The Doctor tripped over a fallen table and rolled out of the way before two clawed paws turned it into a pile of splinters. Then, the Doctor was throwing an apron in the beast’s face as if to blind it, but its fangs shredded the apron like shears through tissue paper. The Doctor’s face— his wonderful, goblin-esque face, which always smirked at danger— showed nothing but fear.

Jamie’s heart was pounding so fast he almost couldn’t breathe. He had to do something, anything. The Doctor couldn’t die here. Not on Christmas, not any day.

Then he noticed the golden bundle in the Doctor’s hands.

That’s it.

“Doctor!”

The Doctor risked one second to look towards the window. There was Jamie, waving frantically towards the door.

“Come out! Come out!”

By this time, the Doctor’s senses had put themselves on a sort of autopilot. He scrambled, quick as he could, ducking underneath a flying box of chip bags. He ran out into the night air, into Jamie’s arms.

“Jamie! What-”

“Hey! Beastie!”

The spider-cat was crawling towards them, its body lowered in a crouch. The Doctor knew that it was going to pounce at any moment. He could run, he thought, at least distract it from Jamie. He had the cub.

He didn’t have the cub.

Jamie raised the baby cat in his right arm. Both the Doctor and the beast watched in horror as he leaned back…

“Jamie, no!”

… and swung, lunging forward so hard that he doubled over.

The beast yelped, and its eight legs scrambled themselves into knots as it raced towards the pond.

“Jamie, how could you?” The Doctor covered his face in his hands. “It was so young! You utterly black-hearted… you… what are you laughing at?”

Jamie’s snickering grew louder as he stood up. There, in his hand, was the lion cub. It was a little dazed and crying out in panic, but it was there.

A crack rang out across the pond. Both the Doctor and Jamie looked to the creature, which was now standing very, very still on the icy surface of the pond. It looked at them, its eyes wide in fear. Then it spotted the cub. It moved one paw.

The ice broke underneath it in one massive crunch. The creature shrieked as it flailed wildly, splashing with all eight limbs in the ice-cold water.

“Now, Jamie, run!”

The spider-cat roared, its claws squeaking as it clutched more ice, but the two time travelers were gone in moments.

***

It had been a tiring run from the pond, and a panicked few minutes when the Doctor fiddled with the zoo’s locked doors, but they finally reached the lion habitat unharmed and with no sign of the creature behind them. The lion habitat was an outcrop of brown rock and green foliage, which was now covered in snow, surrounded by a thick metal gate. At first glance, it looked totally empty, but there was a heated cave at the back where the lions could retreat for warmth. The darkness within it shifted vaguely.

“We’re not going to climb in there, are we, Doctor?”

“No, Jamie, of course not. We just have to get the mother’s attention… oh, there she is now!”

Compared to the spider-cat of shadows, the mother lion was as calming to see as a house cat. She strode out curiously, her tail flicking in minor irritation. The Doctor could hear the cries of more cubs from the heated den behind her.

“Hello, miss.” The Doctor gave a little bow and then carefully shoved the lost cub through the bars.

The cub lifted itself up weakly on its front paws and stared at its mother.

The mother lion leaned forward and sniffed a few times. Then she turned to go back to the den.

“Shouldn’t it be carrying the wee thing?” said Jamie. “Is she waiting for it to follow her?”

“No… no, something isn’t right.”

The Doctor squinted. He had much better vision than humans had, and he could see more of the cubs that were inside the cave. He noticed how they were a lot bigger than the cub they rescued, and how much more they moved around…

“Oh dear. It’s the runt.”

“What?”

“This cub is the runt of the litter!” The Doctor’s hearts dropped as the cub sadly looked toward its mother, trying to totter towards her. “And sometimes a mother will reject the runt in order to provide for the other cubs.”

Jamie gaped, first at the Doctor, then at the mother. “Hey, come back! Don’t leave your wee one out in the cold, you cruel cat bitch!”

“Jamie.” The Doctor tried to put some energy into his admonishing, but he couldn’t. He could only stare at the poor baby in front of him.

A soft growl rumbled behind them. The Doctor and Jamie turned to see the spider-cat beast. Its fur was covered in ice crystals, but it surprisingly looked just fine. The Doctor made a note to find out just what this creature was, where it came from.

“You knew,” said the Doctor. “Didn’t you?”

The beast huffed. The shadows of its fur rippled softly, like a calm breeze.

“You just wanted to give it a home.”

“Are you really going to let it have the bairn, Doctor?”

“Well… why not?” The Doctor reached through the metal bars and scooped up the cub. “After all… it’s Christmas.”

The cub squirmed at first, but as the Doctor stepped closer to the spider-cat, it seemed to sense what was happening. It calmed down as the Doctor placed it a few feet before the creature.

The shadow cat leapt down and rubbed its head against the cub. The ground rumbled as an unearthly purr rolled throughout the whole zoo. The cub nuzzled back and grew happily limp as the shadow cat grabbed it by its scruff and put it in a small pouch of darkness in the shadow cat’s side.

Its amber eyes looked up at the Doctor and Jamie. It blinked slowly, and then turned to stare out into the night. Its eyes glowed brighter and brighter, until a thin amber line appeared before it and opened. The Doctor and Jamie caught a glimpse of someplace warm and sunny, with clear blue skies and lush plant life. The creature stepped through it, and the rift closed behind it.

The Doctor and Jamie stared at the empty space, both at a loss for words.

Finally, the Doctor broke the silence.

“I think I could go for some eggnog right about now.”

“Oh. Aye.”

“And I’m sure we can bake some more Christmas cookies.”

“Oof.”

“Ah. Right. Nevermind.”

“…I could eat some more.”

“Of course.”

The Doctor cleared his throat and put a hand on Jamie’s back.

“Come along, Jamie.”

And with that, the two of them headed back to the TARDIS, and they had a very Merry Christmas.

And far away, on another world and in another time, the creature and its cub started a long and happy life together.


End file.
